Whoops! Those anonymous Internet threats came from up the block.

The long-standing, heavilydocumentedmilitarization of evensmall-townAmericanpoliceforces was always going to create problems when it met anonymous Internet threats. And so it has, again—this time in Evansville, Indiana, where officers acted on some Topix postings threatening violence against local police. They then sent an entire SWAT unit to execute a search warrant on a local house, one in which the front door was open and an 18-year old woman sat inside watching TV.

The cops brought along TV cameras, inviting a local reporter to film the glorious operation. In the resulting video, you can watch the SWAT team, decked out in black bulletproof vests and helmets and carrying window and door smashers, creep slowly up to the house. At some point, they apparently "knock" and announce their presence—though not with the goal of getting anyone to come to the door. As the local police chief admitted later to the Evansville Courier & Press, the process is really just “designed to distract." (SWAT does not need to wait for a response.)

Officers break the screen door and a window, tossing a flashbang into the house—which you can see explode in the video. A second flashbang gets tossed in for good measure a moment later. SWAT enters the house.

On the news that night, the reporter ends his piece by talking about how this is "an investigation that hits home for many of these brave officers."

But the family in the home was released without any charges as police realized their mistake. Turns out the home had an open WiFi router, and the threats had been made by someone outside the house. Whoops.

So the cops did some more investigation and decided that the threats had come from a house on the same street. This time, apparently recognizing they had gone a little nuts on the first raid, the police department didn't send a SWAT team at all. Despite believing that they now had the right location and that a threat-making bomber lurked within, they just sent officers up to the door.

"We did surveillance on the house, we knew that there were little kids there, so we decided we weren't going to use the SWAT team," the police chief told the paper after the second raid. "We did have one officer with a ram to hit the door in case they refused to open the door. That didn't happen, so we didn't need to use it."

Their target appears to be a teenager who admits to the paper that he has a "smart mouth," dislikes the cops, and owns a smartphone—but who denies using it to make the threats.

While the open WiFi issue has caused many problems over the last five years—especially in child porn cases—the FBI is becoming more savvy about how it executes search warrants. As we noted last December, a well-run FBI child porn investigation (also in Indiana) took rather obvious precautions before executing a warrant:

On April 30, two FBI special agents drove past the Carmel home and noted the existence of two WiFi networks reachable from the property. One used WEP encryption, the other had the more robust WPA2, but the key point from the FBI's perspective was that neither network was unsecured. A search thus seemed much more likely to find its proper target.

Because most people aren't stupid enough to make obvious threats from their own home Internet connection, the corollary principle also holds: if a home does have an open WiFi connection, investigators might want to ease away from the flashbangs-and-SWAT-team approach; the threat of getting it wrong is a real one.

But Evansville police aren't backing down from their initial SWAT raid (read more about their later justification for using such force). And the targets of that raid aren't pleased. As the owner of the first house told the paper, "The front door was open. It’s not like anyone was in there hiding. To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive."

The city will be paying to repair the damage it caused.

Not that all Evansville residents think the SWAT raid was in any way improper. Writing on the same Topix message boards where the initial threats emanated, one resident responded to critics: "They had a warrant. Sometimes warrants turn up nothing. Her home was repaired. On with your life now crusader!!! Lol"

"Noodle heads come on here thinking they are just big bad asses, threatening cops and their families," wrote another, "then the cops come back and bitch slap them with SWAT teams and flash bang grenades. Awesome. Teach these fools a lesson and make examples out of them."

But when all you have is an IP address, some non-trivial percentage of the time you teach a lesson to the wrong fools.

(Thanks to a local Ars reader for bringing the case to our attention.)

247 Reader Comments

Remember the good old days when Andy Griffith showed up and politely asked you to come to the station? Imagine Don Knots now with body armor and assault weapons tasing Goober for non-compliance. WTF happened to America?

Remember the good old days when Andy Griffith showed up and politely asked you to come to the station? Imagine Don Knots now with body armor and assault weapons tasing Goober for non-compliance. WTF happened to America?

"Noodle heads come on here thinking they are just big bad asses, threatening cops and their families," wrote another, "then the cops come back and bitch slap them with SWAT teams and flash bang grenades. Awesome. Teach these fools a lesson and make examples out of them."

"Noodle heads come on here thinking they are just big bad asses, threatening cops and their families," wrote another, "then the cops come back and bitch slap them with SWAT teams and flash bang grenades. Awesome. Teach these fools a lesson and make examples out of them."

This person is quite clearly an idiot.

Comments sections on most news websites and blogs are where stupidity is distilled to extremely high concentration. Between the bumper-sticker answers and predictable tic-tac-toe argumentation, I don't bother reading them most of the time in order to maintain some semblance of hope for human beings as a species.

Remember the good old days when Andy Griffith showed up and politely asked you to come to the station? Imagine Don Knots now with body armor and assault weapons tasing Goober for non-compliance. WTF happened to America?

A nation full of sheep that seem to think it's un'mericun to question the motives of politicians and refuse to accept the militarization of the police. Frightened timid little lambs that think only crazies believe that police should not be immune from prosecution for grievous errors (like using a no knock warrant on the wrong address and ending up injuring or killing an innocent home owner).

Isn't it equally possible that someone drove down their street and used the open wifi network to make the threats? the neighbor kid is probably a smart mouth (being a teenager) but why would cops assume it was a neighbor? (b/c they're as stupid as our politicians. dur).

Remember the good old days when Andy Griffith showed up and politely asked you to come to the station? Imagine Don Knots now with body armor and assault weapons tasing Goober for non-compliance. WTF happened to America?

Lets give a bunch of self-righteous rednecks we can't criticize military powers and equipment to serve warrants on bullshit "threats." What could possibly go wrong.

This is just incredible. Instead of staking out the house and arresting people as they come out, they go in there like a Falluja raid. I rarely say this because its lost meaning, but this is EXACTLY what's wrong with America. The left can't criticize "our boys in uniform" so they get to do whatever the fuck they want. its time we started judging cops, firemen, and soldiers by their actions and stop giving this pretentious 'thank you for your service' bullshit lip service.

We need federal intervention and guidelines for SWAT. This is a reform this country needs ASAP. I don't trust some dropout who doesn't know how IP networking works to not get me killed.

"Noodle heads come on here thinking they are just big bad asses, threatening cops and their families," wrote another, "then the cops come back and bitch slap them with SWAT teams and flash bang grenades. Awesome. Teach these fools a lesson and make examples out of them."

Remember, let this be a lesson that you should always use WPA2 to minimize the chances that the police will overreact to something somebody said online and come smashing into your house with heavy weapons.

Because most people aren't stupid enough to make obvious threats from their own home Internet connection, the corollary principle also holds: if a home does have an open WiFi connection, investigators might want to ease away from the flashbangs-and-SWAT-team approach; the threat of getting it wrong is a real one.

Then they're lucky, because by my understanding they're not required to.

Also lucky nobody was killed. That happens too often as well.

Even had this been the right house, the use of force here was excessive, and dangerous.

What do you mean by "they're not required to"? What if the flashbang had landed in a baby crib? Does a warrant give a SWAT team a licenses to indiscriminately kill? Does the S in SWAT stand for stupid?

Wow. I'd be peeved if I was the incorrect target. Can flash bangs do permanent eye/ear damage?

It's possible and it has happened but it's highly unlikely and incidents are very rare. They're specifically designed to be non-lethal and cause only very temporary after-effects. As with anything, like simply getting out of bed, for example (think tripping and falling on a bedpost), shit happens.

And yes I would be highly pissed off if my 18 y/o kid got facerolled by a bunch of over-zealous rednecks in paramilitary garb who can't even be expected to do routine police work.

How hard is it to realize that an IP address does not equal a person! With the number of vulnerabilities in routers (WEP is broken, some routers PINs can be cracked, plus the standby of unencrypted access points or ones with easily guessable passwords), it's way too easy for an IP address to route to someone other than who actually was using it. [facepalm]

Remember, let this be a lesson that you should always use WPA2 to minimize the chances that the police will overreact to something somebody said online and come smashing into your house with heavy weapons.

Or, as more of these mistaken identity cases crop up, leave your wifi open and on the default name -- to get plausible deniability if you are doing something illegal. If you want encryption, tunnel through VPN or SSH.

Yeah, those guys are assholes, they suited up and they'll be damned if they get uncomfortable in the gear and not get to look cool on tv. You can't defend responding to a potential threat in the strongest manner you have just so you can disregard all situational observations. They are either stupid, lazy, or possibly both. The proper application of judgment for a situation is a part of their job, just like they should know better than to stroll into a bank robbery in progress with hostages alone and without anyones knowledge, they should know better than to send a SWAT team to investigate a potential threat. People writing shit on the internet is NOT a credible threat by itself, but a credible potential threat that may require investigation. And these people saying 'hell yeah!!' are irrelevant to any practical discussion unless they have firsthand experience with a SWAT team infiltrating their home mistakenly. Just like if you haven't had the hell of having your identity stolen, you can not legitimately say that it is no big deal.